A carton of grape juice is not the same as a carton of cigarettes. Not even close.

But the Ontario Medical Association — spooked by soaring levels of overweight and obesity in young Canadians — is pretending that it is.

Tuesday, association president Dr. Doug Weir urged that popular foods such as chocolate milk, fruit juice and pizza should be taxed at a higher rate and also come with graphic and unpleasant health warnings — like a picture of a foot with a bleeding ulcer, which can be a side effect of diabetes.

Nearly 60 per cent of Canadian adults, and nearly 32 per cent of Canadian children, are overweight or obese. Thirty-five years ago, only 15 per cent of children were in this category.

The doctors’ group is concerned that the amount of sugar in the milk and juice, and the fat in the pizza, could be making us too heavy. They want dramatic action. You can read more on their website at https://www.oma.org/

Doctors are among the most revered groups in Canadian society. We look to them for guidance. They are right to be concerned about obesity. But, unfortunately, they’re prescribing the wrong medicine. And their simple-minded solution shows that too many of them don’t understand the complex relationship between people and their food.

Here’s how cigarettes are different from food. Cigarettes are bad for you no matter what — even if you smoke only once a month. But the melted cheese on pizza or a glass of chocolate milk is good for you, in moderation. These foods are a great way to get calcium into your child. Dietitians recommend them for this reason.

Why are the doctors attacking these valuable foods and not others that are less valuable? Why don’t they go after mayonnaise, bacon, peanuts and cookies? Those are all loaded with fat or sugar, too.

And furthermore, why don’t doctors demand that taxes be raised and warnings placed on personal computers, cellphones, video games and TV sets? After all, these things have made greater and greater claims on children’s time, to the exclusion of physical activity. And that has made it harder and harder for children to keep their weight healthy.

There’s nothing wrong with foods like pizza, grape juice and chocolate milk — if they are consumed in moderation and if the person enjoying them is burning up any extra calories by exercising.

Raising taxes on popular foods won’t stop people from eating them. They will just hurt lower-income families — who disproportionately suffer from overweight — and distract us from the complex job of reversing obesity.

Understanding the twisted roots of overeating in a society with cheap, abundant food means a journey into our psychological, social and physiological selves. Answers are not easy to find in these circumstances. But we need to have a national conversation about it.

Here are some ideas that I think will help a lot more than putting a picture of a diseased liver on a pizza box:

•Offer tax breaks to gyms that provide teenagers with free memberships (GoodLife Fitness did this in the summer, for example.) Have high schools keep their fitness rooms open and available at lunchtime and after school so that any student can work out, regardless of family income. These strategies would create a lifelong fitness habit.

•Require every school to create a “walking school bus” — a group of children who are supervised by volunteer parents as they walk to school together, welcoming any and all newcomers along the way.

•Bring back “home economics” in Grade 7 and 8 where, as part of the curriculum, students learned to plan for, prepare and cook nutritious meals. Anyone who enjoys cooking has less need for fatty, over-processed takeout meals or heat-and-serve fare.

•Promote the benefits of sleep. It’s beginning to become clear that those who don’t sleep enough have a harder time keeping their weight down. Seven to eight hours a day of sleepfends off food cravings and controls levels of stress hormones that cause your body to store fat.